Puritan and Pilgrim in the 16th-17th Century in New England - Research Paper Example

Puritan and Pilgrim in the 16th and 17th Century in New England. In the society that we have in the United s today, which can be described as humanistic modernism, religion is an important aspect of our culture, but it exists as one aspect among many others. There is also a clear commitment to diversity, and tolerance of different branches of Christianity alongside many other religions. It is hard to imagine a society where one religion, or even one branch of a religion, completely dominates, dictating how people should live. This was, however, the situation in the 16th and 17th centuries in New England when separate groups that we now know as Puritans and the Pilgrims colonized specific areas and set up their own little enclaves. Like any physics of opposite attractions, they did not agree on the same single religious tradition. Thus the two forms of European religious devotees established their own principles, different from Catholics, and consequently created separate social grounds. This paper examines the two religious groups, tracing the chains of cause and effect that resulted in the way that New England developed, and examining rural changes, and the cultural and economic aspects of these emerging communities which turned out to be an influential part of America’s early heritage. The emergence of both Puritans and Pilgrims can be traced fairly and squarely back to the tumultuous event of the Reformation in Europe. Starting in Germany, and spreading across Northern Europe, there was a growing dissatisfaction with aspects of the Christian Church leadership, particularly in areas related to abuse of finances, moral dissolution, and key theological issues relating to the role of bishops and senior clergy. In Britain there was an on-going religious debate relating to the Reformation agenda, but this was further complicated in the Church of England, which departed from the control of Rome, largely due to differences between Henry VIII and the Pope on the rules relating to marriage and divorce. In Scotland, the Presbyterians separated absolutely from Rome and set up their own structures, without the controversial bishop role, while in England many reformist Christians were dissatisfied with the compromises made by the Church of England. In the North East of England a small group were persecuted for refusing to integrate within the Church of England. Their major complaint was that the Church had not sufficiently cleansed itself of the immoral features that characterized the Roman Catholic church. This caused them to be rejected by their local parishes in England and so they emigrated first to Holland and then to the New World, hoping to build a new life there which was truer to biblical precepts. This intention to travel in search of their religious goals is what gave them the name “Pilgrims.” They set up the Plymouth colony in the face of hardships like hunger, disease and danger from the indigenous peoples, and their little group survived these serious challenges to become a successful New World community. The Puritans were also in dispute with the Church of England, and their approach was to try to change things from within. Their problem with the Church was not just the structures, but also what they perceived as serious moral failings which ran counter to biblical teachings. This was a much larger group than the Pilgrims, and within Puritan groups there was quite a broad spectrum of opinion. Some were concerned more with theological arguments, and some were forcibly excluded by the Church of England, being seen as too extreme and disruptive. The group which took the path of emigration, again to Holland and then to the New World, consisted of some of the most radical reformists, and this influenced the way that the Puritan colony developed. It was altogether stricter on moral codes, for example, insisting on clear differentiation between the roles of men and women, a seriousness in daily life that prohibited many worldly pleasures and advocated a single-minded devotion to god. The colonies that the Puritans first set up were around the Massachusetts Bay area, and they grew very quickly. The situation in the New World differed greatly from the context that both groups had left behind. Scholars note that they both feared and welcomed the challenge of the unknown territory: “... a basic conditioning factor was the frontier, the wilderness.”1 For the Puritans discipline and order were seen as the prerequisites for taming this wild, natural landscape. A key feature of their society was the art of preaching, and a continuous exhortation for believers to study the scriptures.2 Both formally appointed ministers and lay people needed to develop reading and interpreting skills, and children had to grow quickly into responsible and productive members of the community. This meant that schools were an early priority. We see the influence of this still in the present time with the existence of schools and colleges in New England which command the respect of the whole world. Puritans placed a great emphasis on individual responsibility and self-discipline. They rejected notions of kings and bishops and set up social regulation based on rules and patriarchal overseers. It is important to remember that political issues were an extension of the personal life that they struggled to keep under control: “For the Puritan mind it was not possible to segregate a man’s spiritual life from his communal life.”3 From this basis of individual and family rectitude, notions of community, region and nation gradually evolved. The Puritans put their religious and moral principles into effect rationally and logically, unencumbered by the monarchy of England and the hierarchies of the English Church. It was a genuine and sincere attempt to create a new and better world, following Christian principles. While the social structures of the present day no longer follow these overtly Puritan precepts, the principle of sitting down and working out how society should be governed is very much a part of core American heritage. Another important feature of the Puritan approach is that they maintained links with and affection for their English homeland. This is evident in the many English place names that they gave to their settlements: “The founders’ encounter with the New World served less as a catalyst for an emergent American identity than as a colonial setting for the reaffirmation of their English origins.”4 Villages build around simple churches replicated their English homeland, albeit in a spare and simple style, as befits the Puritan ideals of moderation in all things. The Puritan leaders in the early crossings were well educated and able to put into effect the latest agricultural technologies, which in turn produced relatively good crops and a fast growing population. The ability to adapt to the local surroundings was a crucial factor in the survival of early communities, since not everything that they encountered was known to them from the England. Puritan treatises such as Dudley’s famous “Account of the method of Making Sugar from the Juice of the Maple Tree in New England”5 were created to support the practical efforts of the colonists, but at the same time enhanced the careers and reputations of their authors in the emerging field of natural Science back in England. Authors such as John Winthrop and John Cotton worked out theories for the proper organization of government, and these ideas influenced the way that the new colony operated. On the positive side, this meant that new ideas came thick and fast, bringing important knowledge into the emerging society, but at the same time there was a tendency for the community to over-estimate its ability to rule on all things. Their exuberance in taming the wilderness extended to a desire to suppress ideas and practices that were not in tune with their own beliefs. One feature of both Pilgrim and Puritan societies in New England was a tendency to be rather paranoid about persecution from outsiders. They both had an inward focus, and in the case of the Pilgrims especially, there was good reason to fear the hostile environment around them. The Pilgrims were less well educated than the Puritans, and a more heterogeneous group. They were also considerably smaller in number, and located in a single spot. This made them more vulnerable to diseases, natural disasters and hostilities with indigenous peoples. On the other hand, their tight-knit community and unity of purpose and beliefs favored the development of good systems of local government which have served the North American continent well ever since. Their exposed situation required swift allocation of property and good communal relations if they were to get their seed into the ground quickly and take advantage of the opportunities for all kinds of agriculture. This necessity cause the Pilgrims to organize themselves in a new system called “coventanting”: “The inhabitants of a new plantation quickly drew up agreements about land allocations and mutual obligations (for fences, control of livestock, common grazing areas and the like), using principles derived from English trading companies and land corporations. Town covenants provided an immediate framework for the difficult and expensive enterprise of launching new settlements.”6 Pilgrims were very concerned about creating a stable economic unit out of their church communities, and this had the advantage of setting up good systems for trade and mutual support, providing security for investments, and policing wrongdoing tightly. If a person did not adhere to the precepts of the community, he or she faced the possibility of exclusion from the community, and in the dangerous New England territories of the time this was a terrifying prospect. The Pilgrim economic structures were very influential in founding the parameters for capitalist expansion in the New World, but again there was a tendency to be exclusive, rather than inclusive, and to impose very strict rules on participation in the community. In summary, then, both Puritan and Pilgrim ideas helped to shape the physical environment, through community building, agriculture and gradual scientific exploration which turned the natural resources into economic wealth. New England to this day retains its rather old-fashioned outward image, through the plain wooden churches and village structures with quaint British names. The psychology of the New England settlers combined individuality and self-reliance in matters of faith, and in the family unit, with a patriarchal social structure. Women and children were very much subordinate to the authority of husbands and fathers, but both groups had a characteristic commitment to education of all citizens. At the same time there was clear and documented commitment to community values, and these fed into the early political structures of the whole of the North American continent. By the end of the seventeenth century, colonists had established their version of a Christian community, based on traditional values allied to new scientific progress. Many of the narrower precepts have been rejected in our modern society, but traces of the core beliefs of independence of spirit, frugality and industrious economic activity for the benefit of all have informed modern capitalist American values. Above all the courage of these first settlers, coming to a strange land to turn their ideas into reality and working together to overcome obstacles, characterizes the independence of mind of New English society, combining as it does the best of both Old and New worlds. References Conforti, Joseph A. Imagining New England: explorations of regional identity from the pilgrims to the mid-twentieth century. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Dudley, Paul. “Account of the method of Making Sugar from the Juice of the Maple Tree in New England” 1720, reprinted in Perry Miller and Thomas Herbert Johnson (Eds.), The Puritans: a Sourcebook of Their Writings. Toronto: General Publishing, 2001, pp. 747-748. Gordis, Lisa M. Opening Scripture: Bible Reading and Interpretive Authority in Puritan New England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Miller, Perry. Errand into the Wilderness. Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2000. Moore, Susan Hardman. Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home. New York: Yale University Press, 2007. Read More